Venerable Leonard Lessius

Abstract

The high point of the development of Scholastic economic analysis was reached at about the turn of the sixteenth century. During the next 100 years, much of the impetus it had accumulated in the hands of Italian theologians in the fifteenth and Spanish moralists in the following century, was lost. Before the onset of the era of decline, however, scholastic economics was brought to a new pitch in the writings of the Belgian Jesuit, Leonard Lessius (de Leys) (1554–1623). Later contributors of some note were Juan de Lugo (1583–1660) and Giambattista de Luca (1613–83). The seventh and eighth volumes of Cardinal Lugo’s Disputationes scholasticae et morales (Lyons 1642, repub. Paris 1893), for example, contain comprehensive treatments of analytical issues of traditional concern for the schoolmen. Cardinal Luca’s scholarly Theatrum veritatis et justitiae (Rome, 1669–81) and his shorter Il dottor volgare (Rome 1673) are also wide-ranging in their examination of economic questions.